Posted By: Mary J. Categories: Digital Marketing Posted: September 5, 2019

What is a Digital Marketing Strategy and its Importance?

What is a Digital Marketing Strategy and its Importance?

Digital marketing strategy is a common phrase that pops out whenever you’re searching for ways to increase your business and brand awareness. But what is it, exactly? More importantly, why should you care?

If you see this, you’re in luck. I’m going to answer all of the questions above, so keep on reading!

What is a Digital Marketing Strategy?

To understand what digital marketing strategy is, you’ll need to know the meaning behind digital marketing. It’s the promotion and selling of products or services through digital platforms like social media, websites, mobile apps, etc.

Hence, a digital marketing strategy is a set of plans or blueprints to achieve your long-term business goals through the use of digital media. Similar to any other marketing tactics, it involves several vital components:

A Clear Objective

Any strategy should start with a well-defined intention, and the same also applies to digital marketing. Your goals should be:

  • Specific – your objective should be tangible. Instead of something vague like “be super famous on Instagram,” try “increase Instagram engagement rate by 4%.”
  • Relevant – aside from being concrete, your aspiration should be related to your company’s values. For example, Patagonia’s mission as a brand of outdoor gear and clothing is to save the earth. It is reflected in their marketing effort, such as the famous Don’t Buy This Jacket campaign and Worn Wear program.
  • Measurable – the success of your goals must be easily measured with metrics like key performance indicators.
  • Realistic and timely – it should be within reasonable boundaries such as budget and timeline.

Defining Your Audience’s Persona

An audience persona is a rough profile of your target customers. It’s designed to promote better user engagements using quantitative and qualitative data that can be collected from various research and surveys.

Quantitative

This is the hard data of customers’ backgrounds that influence their buying behaviors. It consists of:

  • Age – knowing the age of your demographics helps you to select the right platform. For example, the age range of typical Snapchat and Instagram users is 18-24, hence why the platforms are ideal for youth-oriented brands. Additionally, age differences also affect the manners of communication.
  • Gender – men, and women have different needs and purchasing behavior. Some businesses, like a clothing brand, for example, might need to segment according to this.
  • Location – it helps to give you an idea of where most of your traffic comes from and what region-specific culture that may drive people to care about your products.
  • Profession – this and income level might affect buying decisions because different occupations have different needs and purchasing power.

Qualitative

Meanwhile, this data type describes the psychological factors behind consumers’ purchasing attitudes and habits. Here are the few important ones:

  • Interests and motivations – what sort of trends that your customers like? What kind of ideas that drive them into action?
  • Setbacks – which of your products or services can solve typical consumers’ dilemmas?
  • Lifestyle – this ties in with the quantitative aspects mentioned above. Different backgrounds affect lifestyles and consumption.

If you need detailed analysis and consultation from experts to build your clientele’s profile, I recommend SDK Marketing to get you started!

The Proper Tools

Finally, all that’s left is picking the best tools to use. Weed out options fast with these criteria:

  • Functionality – the best tools for marketing should have all the necessary features and are easy to use. You can decide between specialization or a jack-of-all-trades.
  • Integration – your tools should be compatible with other extensions to create a more integrated user experience.
  • Maintenance – this involves upgrading, creating backups, and maintaining the security and performance of your system.
  • Price – they should be affordable but valuable based on your budget and the factors mentioned above.

One of our must-have tools is Mentionlytics. It’s an essential tool for monitoring your business success online and adapting its digital marketing strategy to always changing market conditions.

Why is it Important?

Now that you’ve seen the bigger picture, let’s move on to why it matters. Below are several reasons why you should consider going digital with your marketing strategy.

Brand Awareness And Engagement

Your customers go to the internet to evaluate the products they want to buy. For instance, 80% of millennials on Pinterest use the platform to help them decide what items to purchase.

Another survey shows that 86% of people use social media to stay in touch with brands. That means digital branding is your chance to gain the public’s recognition and engage with them.

Cost-Effective But Profit-Efficient

Digital marketing allows you to cut costs while promising a high return on investment. According to this infographic, you’ll need to spend around $1800 in traditional marketing to reach the 2000 audience milestone, while digital marketing will only cost you $125, more or less.

Trackable And Adaptable

Aside from targeting potential customers efficiently, digital marketing tactics also enable companies to track their campaign progress in real-time to see what works and what doesn’t. It allows marketers to adapt fast, especially in the fast-changing internet world.

Wrapping Up

A digital marketing strategy is an actionable plan for success, taking advantage of consumers that have grown dependent on the internet.

It should have a definite purpose, be based on a tangible customer profile, and executed with the appropriate tools. Plus, a solid digital marketing plan can increase the public’s awareness and engagement of your brand, save you money, and be adaptable when necessary.

So, are you up for the challenge?

 
       

Mary J.

Author

I am a passionate blogger and the chief editor at my own content marketing company PRable. Since college, I was interested in break-through technology and technical writing about innovative products and services that change our everyday lives for the better. I am also interested in web design and photography.